Film Project 1 – Production Days 1-3 Reflection

Our film project has been fraught with problems from the start, and our first production day was no different. We have struggled to find a strong idea that we can all agree on, haven’t found the balance of roles within the group, and the communication and teamwork has not been there in order to get the best out of everyone.

While we’ve had many creative differences with members of our group, a major one was the number of actors (some suggested 2, others thought 4), and the focus less on interesting cinematography and editing and more on a dramatic and emotional narrative, something I thought we simply couldn’t pull off. Neville had a cool editing idea in which we would shoot the same shot twice with the same actors and play them over each other, to great a ‘ghost’ effect with one actor. Unfortunately that didn’t come into play and 4 actors were brought in.

Another mistake in my opinion that was made was the place of original shooting, which wasted not only our members time but also the actors who were all doing us a favour. We originally shot at Ben’s house in Glenbrook (which was a 90+ minute commute for a few members of our group), and didn’t appropriately organise a shooting schedule or a proper plan, which ultimately led to the camera battery running out (for some reason we decided not to borrow an RMIT camera which has several backup batteries) after several hours of shooting and only a small percentage of the work that was required was completed. As to expect everyone to make the commute again was not appropriate, we had to scrap that days work (an entire Sunday night wasted) and begin reshoots at Neville’s house in Camberwell, far closer for everyone in the group.